She got into the car, and then he did the same. The interior was beautiful. The dashboard the same high-gloss aqua as the exterior, with a chrome streak running through the front where the radio was. The seats were cream-and-aqua leather. The whole car reminded her of saltwater taffy.
She rolled down the window, the crank a strange throwback to childhood she hadn’t thought about in decades, and waved into the house at Elysia as they reversed and pulled out of the driveway. “She said we had to be safe,” she told him, and then felt slightly silly.
He reinforced that by giving her a sideways glance that definitely suggested he thought she was silly.
“You know, when someone says something like that to you, you…have to make sure you say okay. You’re driving first, so I had to say it to you. Like when you say you’ll pray for someone, so you have to immediately say, in your head of course, ‘God, help them out.’ So you don’t forget, because you can’t lie about praying for someone.”
“I…don’t know any of that, Sam.”
“It’s…the rules, Logan.”
“Who says?”
“To…to being a good person.”
She heard herself. It made her think of the conversations she’d been having with Will. About why they got married and the expectations of other people.
It was okay to want to please other people. They lived in a society, after all. Sure, her mom and dad had always had a really clear idea of what a good person was, but mostly Sam agreed.
It was okay to care about that.
They drove through the familiar streets, and it was a wholly unfamiliar vantage point. Not just because she was used to either driving in or riding in an SUV, but because she couldn’t remember the last time she’d ridden in the passenger seat when a man who wasn’t her husband or her father was driving.
She looked down at her hand. At her wedding ring.
She’d changed her husband’s name in her phone, but had left her wedding ring on.
You are still married to him. It does make sense.
“Music?” she asked.
“Sure.”
“Can I plug my phone in?”
“This is a 1957 Chevy Bel Air. It doesn’t have a USB so you can plug in your iPhone.”
“But you…restored it.”
“Yes, I restored it. I didn’t change it into some godless Frankenstein’s monster of a car.”
“How do you listen to music?” she asked.
He tapped the radio, which was a small, analog-looking unit right next to a gold cursiveBel Air.
“It’s an AM radio,” she said, looking at it and feeling like she might as well be turning the knob on an egg timer.
“It is. They didn’t start putting FM in cars until—”
“How do you live like this?”
“Talk radio can introduce you to new perspectives.”
“I’ve been in my dad’s garage, thank you. I’ve heard it all.”
She started to press the channel buttons and mostly got static. Then finally found a station playing tinny-sounding ’80s rock. But nothing so popular she recognized it.
She laid her head back on the seat and resigned herself to her fate. Because it was music or trying to make conversation with Logan, and she had no idea what to talk to him about.